Recommended parts washer fluid?

[rficalora]

To aid with cleaning the lathe I'm refurbishing, I picked up a 20 gallon parts washer. I realized I could buy one, use it, & then resell it when done for most of what I paid for it and it will speed the process. Anyway, most of the parts washer solutions I'm seeing are water based & I'm thinking it's not a good idea to use those with so much bare metal.

What have you guys who restore machinery found that works well to clean them and is cost effective? If you use a water based, do you simply dry and then oil the bare metal to keep from getting flash rust? I'm in the Houston TX area which is very high humidity so flash rust is an issue if not careful.

 

[Deleted member 69715]

I'm a bit north of you in Ohio. What I did was clean my 109 with kerosene and oiled the ways and such with 70 wt Kendall since I wasn't ready to set it up at that time.
Others will have better ideas I'm sure.

 

[aliva]

Many years ago we used good old Varsol with 10% or so of ATF. The ATF was supposed to make the Varsol easier on the hands, this was before rubber gloves. Hey I was 16 and didn't know any better.

 

[Razzle]

I cleaned up my Logan 820 with orderless mineral spirits. It is still my go to parts cleaner for any filthy used tooling I buy.

 

[pontiac428]

Stoddard solvent is the ideal petroleum based solvent for parts washers because of low toxicity, low flash point, and low vapor pressure. I am a chemical czar for the military-industrial complex, and Stoddard is what I use at home.

Water based cleaners are based on water as the solvent, but they don't behave like water with all the salts and surfactants added, so you won't have to worry about rust. At least, not very much. You will have to worry about the price per gallon of elbow grease, worry about the amount of time it takes to clean things, worry about how your will dispose of water-based oi/soap sludge (Pro tip: Same as Stoddard, take it to the waste collectors, don't dump it), and finally, you will have to worry about how the part that was painted one color before you washed it has become a somehow different color after the bio-soapy-eco-degreaser faded it.

My pre-treatment for the Stoddard tank is pressure washing with simple purple whatever (butyl cellosolv synonymous degreaser). Makes the work faster and makes the solvent last longer. For me, 5 gallons of Stoddard changed out every 5 years isn't too bad (10 gals in a 20 gal tank), which works out to maybe 5 engines and 5 transmissions plus everything else to get to that point. That's good product life.

I would not add ATF or any kind of oil to your solvent unless you want to shorten your solvent's capacity and useable life, and interrupt its ability to dry clean and ready to paint. Use gloves to prevent skin drying. Nitrile is good for Stoddard solvent all day, but terrible for ketones like acetone or MEK, and weak with branched hydrocarbons like toluene (lasts for seconds). Conversely, butyl rubber gloves are great for most solvents, but will soften and expand and eventually break through with Stoddard solvent.

 

[benmychree]

In another earlier post I told of using Oil Eater in my washer tank and how it eventually ate (rusted) holes in the bottom of the tank.

 

[GL]

Have had good luck with PSC 1000 solvent, available at Tractor Supply, probably others, in 5 gal cans. Seems to clean well, doesn’t eat your hands, leaves a film to no flash rust. Not necessarily cheap, but was recommended and works well. The cheap end is probably kerosene, which is what I used before I got the parts washer. A quart in a pan cleaned most anything. The parts washer is just handier and stinks less.

 

[Richard King 2]

When I had the shop I used these parts cleaner I used these guys as they came every month or it may have been every 2 months and they emptied my parts washer. With all the Osha requirements I just paid them and they filled out the forms.

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[rficalora]

Great info everyone, thank you!

@pontiac428 - I'm finding "Mineral Spirits Stoddard Solvent" - is that the same thing as just "Stoddard Solvent"? I found this chart online, but, of course, it does not reference "Mineral Spirits Stoddard Solvent" and the sources I've found don't list the CAS or EINECS numbers.

Mineral Spirit Types
CAS No.	EINECS No.	Name	Notes
8030-30-6	232-443-2	Naphtha
8052-41-3	232-489-3	Stoddard solvent
64475-85-0	265-185-4	Mineral spirit type 1
64741-92-0	265-095-5	Mineral spirit type 2	Solvent-refined heavy naphtha (petroleum)
64742-48-9	265-150-3	Mineral spirit type 3	Hydrotreated heavy naphtha (petroleum)
64742-88-7	265-191-7	Mineral spirit type 0	Medium aliphatic solvent naphtha (petroleum)

 

[pontiac428]

Distillation fractions all have CAS numbers, but some of these names were made up along the way.

What one poor chem-eng calls coal tar (CAS 8030-30-6) I might call naphtha (not to be confused with naphthalene), but the fuels lab guy calls it petroleum ether. It's all the same thing in spirit (pun intended). My neighbor used to be a painter, so he calls it petroleum distillates. The old boys called it solvent naphtha or mineral spirits, and if they're extremely old they might call it Ligroin, light oil, or grade oil.

Most "end of pipe" petrochemicals aren't specific. They are compounds that coevolve from a distillation, fractionation, or cracking process, so they have similar physical properties:

Naphtha: Clear colorless to yellow liquid; petroleum distillate containing C5 to C11 hydrocarbons; a typical composition is paraffins 55.4%, naphthenes 30.3%, alkyl benzene 11.7%, dichloroparaffins 2.4%, and benzene less than 0.1%

Stoddard Solvent: Clear colorless to yellow liquid; petroleum distillate containing C5 to C11 hydrocarbons; a typical composition is paraffins 55.4%, naphthenes 30.3%, alkyl benzene 11.7%, dichloroparaffins 2.4%, and benzene less than 0.1%.

Different CAS, same physical properties, may come in same can with different name. Going further, both of these examples have a BP of 100 C, a density of 77%, a flash point of -57 F, and a vapor pressure of 25.8 PSI.

As these fractions get heavier (longer carbon chains), they get oily, so for your parts washer I'd say no more than 14 carbons, minimal branching, but some aryl substitution is acceptable.